This chapter will help you look at your ideal client in a way you never imagined. You will discover a method for fine‐tuning a message that will resonate with them and motivate them to act – meaning reach out to you for help. You'll also get a jump start on discovering how you can put this message in front of your ideal client over and over again, in a systematic way.
If you've ever had a bad sales meeting when you thought you and your prospective client were speaking a different language, this chapter will be of great value.
If you've ever left a client meeting and thought to yourself: “I wish I had 20 clients like that person,” this chapter will make your day.
If you value opportunities to connect with multiple prospects at one time, this chapter will change your business forever.
More clients just like your best client.
The key concept you will discover in this chapter is an interview called the Ideal Relationship Targeting 21 or IRT 21. This 21 question interview is to be conducted with your best clients and it will help you create a message that will resonate with them and target other prospective clients just like them, in large numbers.
When you know how to target prospective clients who are identical to your best client, you have leverage. This means your life as a business leader and sales professional is about to get much, much easier.
In some of the most economically challenged neighborhoods in the United States, people are running to file their taxes.
In January 2010 I met a CPA entrepreneur named Noreen. She had just leased office space, set up her desk, and hung her shingle. She accepted a severance package from a large firm in December and was eager to make her mark on the world.
Noreen's goal was to become the CPA business owners would love. She believed most CPAs were not providing enough guidance and support to their clients. Noreen thought CPAs should be helping small business clients with everything from evaluating equipment financing options to structuring compensation agreements for minimizing tax exposure.
The problem: She had no clients.
Noreen grew up in Miami and speaks English, Spanish, and Creole fluently. This positioned her perfectly to serve the diverse community.
At our first meeting, Noreen clarified the goal for our work together: Get enough clients in the door to have positive cash flow by the summer. I was skeptical until Noreen shared a story with me.
“My parents owned a business and they loved paying their taxes. I know that sounds strange, but when every penny you bring in goes toward paying bills, your tax refund is a welcome windfall. Each January, when the W‐2 forms (wage statements detailing how much an employee was paid) would show up in our mailbox, my parents would rush down to the local franchise tax prep company and get our taxes done – so we could get the refund. These places offered an advance on your tax return and you could walk in with forms and walk out with money.”
Immediately, Noreen and I reached out to community leaders in middle class and economically challenged neighborhoods. Our message: “Come in and get the cash the government owes you. Bring your W‐2 form from your employer, we will do your taxes, and give you the refund you're owed – on the spot.”
As people came into the office, Noreen made note of the local employers and sent letters to each one. These letters had a different message. This message was:
“We are the entrepreneur's CPA. Having grown up as the daughter of two business owners, I know the challenges of doing payroll, evaluating equipment purchases, and securing financing for growth. I want to help you use financial information to make better decisions. The next time your CPA says you can't do something, call me and together we will figure out how you can!”
Just three short years later, Noreen was doing taxes for over 2,500 families, but she was also known as “the entrepreneur's CPA,” with over 400 business clients.
How did Noreen make that happen?
She focused on matching her message to the different audience groups. Her tax return message resonated with consumers and her business friendly message connected with small business owners.
Matching your message to your audience is the first part of a three‐letter acronym that will make all the difference in developing relationships. That acronym: MAD.
It stands for:
I love helping people get MAD. It is the one thing that most people don't understand when they attempt to start and deepen relationships with prospective clients.
Getting MAD, and even obsessing over it, is helpful for relationships.
Now, if you thought I was advocating screaming and yelling as a strategy, well, that may have some applicability as a delivery method for certain audiences, but the acronym makes it easy to remember how everything works in alignment.
This concept is critical because different groups of people respond to different messages. The response of the message recipient depends on several factors:
There is an expression people often use to describe great sales professionals: “That person could sell ice to an Eskimo.”
While this is descriptive, it highlights everything that's wrong with old‐school sales.
The message doesn't match the audience. The sales pro mentioned in the quote might be good enough to sell one block of ice after approaching 10 Eskimos, but if they approached 10 Hawaiians with the ice, they'd probably go 8 for 10.
It's easier to sell ice to people who are hot. It's even easier to sell ice to people who are hot and have purchased ice before. It is easier still to sell ice to people who are hot, have purchased ice before, and are looking for a new person to supply them with ice.
The powerful idea behind the 60 Second Sale is: if someone is ready, willing, and able to buy from you, and they know you, like you, and trust you, it should only take 60 seconds to close the deal.
That's why we are going to invest time finding people who fit those criteria.
Take a few minutes and think about all the clients you've worked with during your career. Think about everyone who has purchased from you. Now, mentally separate the clients who were the absolute best. What do they all have in common?
They all:
When you are developing a sales message, you develop it for these people – your ideal clients. When I present this concept to an audience, someone always raises a hand and says, “Well, sure Dave, but those people are one in a million.”
The reason you feel these people are so rare is because you have not focused on them. You've spent your entire career focused on attracting “ANY” client and not your “IDEAL” client.
Think about it this way: It is rare to see a blue car on the road. According to the two companies that manufacture auto paint for vehicles produced in the United States, blue cars make up only 7% of the total produced each year. Yet, now that I've shared that statistic with you, you'll see several blue cars today.
Why?
Because you are focused on finding blue cars.
The same thing is true for clients. If you focus on finding ideal clients, you'll be absolutely amazed when they begin dropping out of the sky and landing on your desk.
If you want to start relationships with people who are identical to your best clients, you need to have a message that resonates with them. This means you must find out what motivates them emotionally.
What would make them get up off the couch and run outside in a snowstorm just for a chance to do business with you?
To motivate someone in that way you have to:
Once you have a profile of your ideal client, you need to find more people just like them and begin the process of demonstrating your value. This requires an in‐depth look at each of these folks. The starting point for this analysis is to understand the way your ideal client thinks and what that client feels.
Reach out to a handful of your ideal clients and ask if you can interview them. Your focus is to understand them so you can enter the conversations taking place around their kitchen tables.
In order to identify the ideal audience of clients, we need to find points of commonality among them.
For this purpose, I've developed a list of questions I call the IRT 21. That is an acronym for “Ideal Relationship Targeting 21.”
These 21 questions will help you do a number of things:
We start with a broad focus and narrow our questions down so we can be as specific as possible. This allows us to really get MAD. This means we:
Let's break down each of these questions and determine why they are so effective:
Question 1: Do most of your ideal clients belong to one industry/tribe?
If you were to start your business from scratch, today, your first client would be your most important client. You'd want to know everything about them. Arguably the most important thing to discover is: What groups do they belong to?
The reason this is so important: If you solve a problem for one person, you can solve it for many people. Your clients want to work with people who have experience in the same industry or tribe. (I use this word to identify groups of people gathered for a common purpose. For example, stamp collectors, parents of children who take ballet lessons, golf enthusiasts, and folks who raise chinchillas are all members of a tribe.)
Question 2: Who is the most recognizable ambassador for this group?
Every group has someone taking a high profile to champion the causes it holds dear. Some groups have many people in this role.
Sometimes this will be a media personality and other times it will be a celebrity only in the circles of the group members – like the president of a trade association or industry education group. Your goal is to find out who this “ambassador” is and research everything about them.
Question 3: Who are the emerging leaders of the group?
Most groups have awards or ways of recognizing people who are rising stars. Just like with the ambassadors, you need to know who these people are and find out everything there is to know about them.
If your best clients are trying to emulate the business and lifestyle practices of these people, you need to make sure you are familiar with those practices.
Question 4: What is their average transaction size (when they sell their products/services)?
How much revenue do they bring in per transaction? People who sell country club memberships, jewelry, and private jets have a different average transaction size when compared with people who sell shoes, retail cleaning supplies, and sandwiches. This fact dictates an approach to market that is dramatically different.
Question 5: What is their average investment with you (or a business in your industry)?
Some prospective clients have better access to financial resources and have specific needs for large quantities of your product or service.
Question 6: What do they worry about most?
Is something keeping them awake at night? If they could change one thing about their business or their life, what would it be?
Question 7: What are they angry about?
An easy answer for business‐to‐business clients is regulation. Every business owner thinks there is too much of it, and that it is stifling growth.
Think beyond the obvious. What else might they be angry about? Dig deep into this, because it is helpful in crafting a message.
Question 8: What are their major frustrations?
Again, here you'll see commonality across all industries for certain things – like paperwork, rising energy costs, etc. Dig deep and uncover some specific things your best clients have in common.
Question 9: What do they secretly desire?
This is a difficult answer to pin down. The best way for me to help you understand the value of this question is to give you an example from the world of professional speaking.
These days, anyone can become a professional speaker. You simply have to have the guts to get up in front of a group of people and talk. That's it.
When you ask anyone just starting out in this profession, “What do you secretly desire?” they will say they want to be the next Anthony Robbins or John Maxwell or Zig Ziglar.
Understanding this desire is helpful because people will emulate their heroes and you can develop a message accordingly.
Question 10: Is there a preference to the way they make decisions?
If you have ever pitched to an executive who was a McKinsey alumnus (a former consultant with McKinsey & Company) you know they make decisions through a process called MECE – seeking mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive options. This process attempts to remove emotion and make decisions based on cold hard facts.
Certain industries have generally accepted principles they follow. You need to uncover these and leverage them in your messaging.
Question 11: Do they have their own language?
Have you ever eavesdropped on a conversation between police officers? They have a way of speaking that is unique to their profession.
Wall Street traders also have a language of their own, as do car salespeople and diamond dealers and just about any other industry and tribe. Learn the language, but be careful using it. You can drop an occasional word and look like you're making an effort, but overuse of specific terms will make you seem like a fraud.
Question 12: Who has tried to sell to them and failed?
Who didn't earn their trust? Who has given up on them? Why?
Question 13: Who is working with them successfully?
Who is successfully providing value to them? What is so valuable about this solution? Why do they like it so much?
Question 14: What in the economy has an impact on them?
Are there some economic forces applying pressure to them or their business? For example: Interest rates have a huge impact on real estate sales.
Question 15: What industry trends are currently impacting them?
What is going on within their industry? How is it affecting them? What will happen if this factor changes?
Question 16: What do they read?
Do they read a specific news publication? Do they subscribe to a trade magazine? Is there an informational website they visit regularly? Do they all use a specific app on their phones?
You want to know this: (1) so you can read it too, and (2) so you can submit articles for publication.
Question 17: What organizations do they belong to? Where do they gather?
Similar to question 16, you want to go to the conventions they attend and eventually become a speaker at these gatherings.
Question 18: What lists might they be on?
You want to find a way to target them with your message. If they are all on a specific list, it makes it easier to reach out en masse.
Question 19: Who do they trust?
There is always one person (and sometimes more than one) every group relates to and invests their trust in. You need to find out who that person is for your group of ideal clients.
For example:
People who are politically conservative in the United States trust radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
In the 1960s and 1970s Walter Cronkite, the anchor of CBS Evening News, was regarded as the most trusted man in America.
Question 20: Is there a media outlet they prefer?
Each of us has the option to now choose our flavor of cable news. In addition, there are subcategories of channels appearing on satellite television and radio all the time. Your ideal clients have a preference. Find out what it is.
Question 21: Is there a seasonality to their behavior?
Some businesses only set their budgets in October for a fiscal year beginning on January 1. If you don't have a place in the budget, you cannot get hired. You better target these businesses in the summer and early fall.
Identifying seasonality will help you marshal your resources appropriately when you need to influence a decision.
Adjust the wording of the questions so they apply to an individual business and initiate a conversation with an ideal client. You may not be able to get through all of these questions in one telephone call, but developing a profile over time for each of your best clients and then comparing them to each other will help identify commonality and that will help with your message targeting.
The final element in the MAD formula is the delivery system.
A delivery system is the way the message reaches the target audience. If you are selling something to another person – belly‐to‐belly – you are the delivery system since they get the message directly from you.
The challenge with belly‐to‐belly selling is the lack of leverage. You can only personally meet with a finite number of people in any given day. This stacks the odds against you. Even if your message is perfect and you've selected the ideal audience, your timing might not be right and the time you invest with that individual may not result in a sale.
That's why I recommend using high‐leverage delivery systems to get your message in front of people and help them recognize your value.
That's the focus of our next chapter.